Bravely Default begins exactly the way I was afraid it would, with an overly-long cutscene of characters I don’t know or care about doing things that don’t make any sense to me, and doing it in a way I find mostly annoying. Vaguely infantilized women speak in high-pitched voices, an annoying, amnesiac lothario woos some girls who fawn over him for reasons that, given a thousand years and the processing power of a million minds, I could not possibly fathom, and some sheep fall into a giant hole. Also, there is a kid. I think, actually, the kid is the important part, not the sheep.

This is not starting well for my effort to break through on a genre that has long-since seemed impenetrable at best and childishly silly and self-involved at worst. I am not what they would call a "fan" of JRPGs.

Actually, I’m not a fan of most games out of Japan. There must be some kind of filters you have to clear from your mind to be able to respond positively to these games in their intended form, and those filters are just lodged stubbornly in place for me. The list of historically revered games from across the Pacific that I either haven’t played or haven't enjoyed is a fully fleshed indictment on me as a semi-professional games blogger. These are games that others talk about in terms of sacred texts. I’ll avoid detailing the exhaustive list and simply put this here, and live with the consequences.